Geek Answers: Is swallowing gum harmful to your health?

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Though it’s old as the hills, chewing gum is actually one of the most classically synthetic substances imaginable. Just think about what gum is for a moment: a machine-cut stick of a dried, tar-like substance engineered solely to act as a delivery substrate for engineered flavor molecules, designed for prolonged satisfaction of the wish for taste without satisfaction for the need for calories. Gum really should have caused a salt-style public health panic by now, based off the optics alone — and it probably would have, if this specific health scare wasn’t so powerfully associated with a quaint and distant past, and the well-meaning joke-lies we tell our children. But, all gum-tree tales aside, it’s worth asking: is there actually any harm in swallowing chewing gum?

The technical answer is that, yes, there are possible negative health effects from swallowing chewing gum — just as there can be horrifying effects to drinking water, too. Actually earning those consequences in the real world, though, requires that we swallow such an enormous volume of gum that most of us would find it impossible, even by choice. When addressing this question, though, I’m going to make the assumption that you are both over 6 years of age and that you are not a compulsive oral consumer — whether of gum, or hair, or paperclips, or whatever else. If I’m right in these assumptions, then we can safely change the answer: swallowing gum is completely safe. If you ever find yourself wavering as to whether you should spit your gum out onto the sidewalk and add to the disgusting, rainbow mosaic of human cud that tiles the walkways of so many urban centers, or swallow it? Swallow it.

The reason it is safe to do so ought to be evident from the history of gum, since it was first sold as a food product thanks to the discovery that it is essentially unaffected by the human digestive system. It is not broken down by the acidity of stomach acid, nor by hungry digestive enzymes, and aside from flavor crystals it releases no virtually useful vitamins of energetic molecules for your body to use. The tough molecular structure of chewing gum simply enter the body, sits unharmed for a while, then moves through with ease. While it might take slightly longer to move through you than, say, dietary fiber, even this is not confirmed; there is no reliable evidence showing that ingestion of gum slows or in any way affects the rest of your digestive tract in any reliable way. Nutritionally and digestively, gum really is just along for the ride.

Gum, and the virtual impossibility of using it to create a blockage that actually impedes your digestive tract, is a prime example of how silly non-prescribed enemas really are; there ain’t no secret compartments in your colon. If there were, gum is very specifically what would collects there, rather than allegedly toxin-filled corporate foodstuffs. Any gum-balls that have been found in people have been quite easily spotted by doctors — and could never have been extracted with a mere water jet, regardless. The extreme (read: only) cases of gum-impaction required serious surgical intervention — and got written up to some fanfare, specifically because they are so incredibly uncommon.

As it is, the only real historical cases of gum-based medical distress have occurred in children with absolutely abysmal parental oversight, those allowed to eat chicklets the way third generation bar-maids smoke cigarettes. Even this probably wouldn’t even be enough to cause problems in a full-sized adult stomach, though; gum just isn’t dangerous.

People voluntarily swallow everything from activated charcoal to live tape worms, and generally do not die from doing so; if you do swallow your gum, don’t fret. It won’t be in you for seven years, nor even for seven days unless you have a preexisting digestive issue. If you’ve swallowed gum and it really bothers you that much, just go buy a big, strong cup of coffee. That ought to do you just fine.